A Pirate's Hymn
by Lynn S Wolfe
Summary: On a lifelong search for her father, the fierce and independent redhead Rei comes across the Straw Hat crew. Joining their crew, Rei hopes that her new alliance will bring her closer to finding her father. And her father? Not who you'd ever suspect.
1. Chapter One: Thief

Click.

"Come on..."

Click. Click.

"Almost..."

Click!

"Ah-hah!"

The door of the safe swung open quietly, revealing a very warn, rolled up paper. Slowly, the thief reached inside and snatched out the treasure. With a slow, steady hand, the paper was unrolled and immediately the two dark eyes floating in the dark seemed to glow.

Then suddenly, the glow and the eyes were gone. The paper was quickly rolled back up and the safe door shut. Light footsteps could be heard on the ladder-like stairs, and the dark eyes peered through the window of the door at the top.

Squeaking slightly in protest, the door was pushed open, and the thief stepped out in to the warm and blinding sunshine. The boat rocked contently on the glassy blue waters, and a cool, salty breeze came in to meet the tangerine trees on the ship and the small port around it. Long locks of ruby red hair danced in response, and the thief held her arm up to shield her eyes from the sun.

In the corner, the long-nosed, goggle-toting marksman, Usopp sat, fast asleep and bound tightly in rope, with a throbbing bump on his head. Glancing in his direction, a satisfied smirk played across her face, and she started toward the edge of the boat, to exit quickly with her treasure.

"Whaaaaaaaat?!"

The boy with the straw hat's jaw literally dropped to the ground.

A thin, orange-haired girl stepped forward and picked the still-tied Usopp up by the front of his shirt. "What do you mean you don't remember what they looked like?!" Nami shouted, raising a fist.

"I was...I was only asleep for a little bit when it happened; they came from behind and hit me!"

"Sleep?!" she repeated. "You were supposed to be watching the ship!"

"How are we supposed to get through the Grand Line now?" Zoro inquired sarcastically, sighing and resting an arm on his swords.

Sanji leaned against the railing and pulled out a lighter. "Only one thing to do now," he said after the cigarette had caught the flame and began to smolder. "Go after the thief."

The group nodded in unison, and looked out at the village where they were docked, knowing the thief was hiding somewhere within it.

"But first...SOMEBODY UNTIE ME!"

Despite the crisis taking place on the Going Merry, the sun hung lazily in the soft blue sky, casting sandman rays on to the small village of Crescent. The grass shimmered, the markets became babbling brooks, and the trees whispered drowsy lullabies to one another in the wind.

Shards of sunlight played hide and seek through the leaves of a particularly tall tree, falling like yellowish gems across the face of a young girl who lay dozing on a branch. A dark bag hung from another branch above.

With one leg resting on the branch and the other hanging off the edge, the young girl yawned and shifted slightly in her perch. Her hands were folded across her stomach, and her inaudible breathing had long since been lost in the winds.

Gradually, she became increasingly more aware of an unidentifiable sound growing louder. At first she ignored it, since it was too far away to distinguish, but then she opened one eye and began to sit up, shaking away her grogginess. Slowly the fait buzzing sort of sound grew louder, taking the form of a more distinct hum, and then an identifiable voice. It was someone yelling or screaming, and coming straight for her.

The girl instantly sat up straight, focusing her eyes on the ground, dozens of feet below, and waited to see who the voice belonged to come screaming into the clearing at the base of her tree.

The yelling grew louder still, as the voice approached her, but she heard not one footstep to accompany the voice. Her brows furrowed in puzzlement, and then her eyes widened. Bracing her arms on the branch beneath her, she straightened out her legs to one side of the branch and sprung out of the tree.

Something—or rather, someone—crashed head first into the trunk that she had just been leaning against, asleep. The force of impact shook the tree down to its roots, causing it to groan loudly in protest, the echo reverberating like a small earthquake even before the girl had landed on the ground below.

The startled and slightly shocked redhead waited, kneeling with her hands over her head, for the sickening sound of bones being crushed together and shattering. In the seconds that followed, a few angry leaves fell to the ground, scampering away from the sudden upset. A bird chirped nearby in alarm, but other than that, all was silent.

As she leaned back on her heels, the girl looked up to see if she couldn't figure out what had just happened. When she saw him, she was absolutely disturbed. A boy near her age lay sprawled out across the branch she had just been sleeping on, his arms and legs hanging off to either side of the branch. But what disturbed her was the fact that his hands and feet rested on the ground nearby. His limbs were dozens of feet long, stretching all the way up to the tree where he seemed to be laying, unconscious.

But just a moment later, his arms and legs suddenly retracted, returning his appearance to that of a normal human. The strange boy sat up and rubbed his very red and bleeding face.

"Ouch! Ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch!" he exclaimed. The boy pulled at his cheeks, and they stretched all the way out until they were the span of his arms.

The girl below tried desperately not to flinch and, covering her mouth with her hand momentarily, she got to her feet.

"You!" she called out, pointing at the boy.

He snapped to attention and looked down over his branch at the redhead that stood at the base of the tree.

"Who, me?" he pointed to himself.  
"No, the other dipstick that nearly knocked me out of my tree—yes you!" she shouted up at him. "Who are you and just what the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Yo," he replied shortly, raising his hand in greeting and smiling. "Monkey D. Luffy. And at the moment, I think I'm looking for a thief."

"A thief?" the girl replied in slight amusement. "Well, I'm sure there's plenty of thieves in the world, but I doubt you'll find many here." She crossed her arms across her chest matter-of-

factly and turned away from him. "Any particular reason you were looking in the sky? Last time I checked, thieves couldn't fly."

Luffy laughed lightly, scratching the back of his head. "Well, y'see, I wanted to check in the far side of the town, so I just used my gum gum rocket to get there. I think I may have overshot a little though..."

"'You think'?!" she repeated, and she turned back around to face him again. "You nearly 'overshot' yourself right in to me! You're lucky I wasn't asleep and jumped out of the way in time! If not, you would have been in a whole lot more trouble, you idiot."

Leaning back in response to her shouting, Luffy covered his ears. Suddenly, the klutzy boy began to flail viciously. He had lost his balance and began to fall to one side of the branch, in the process, hitting the bag that hung on one of the branches above him, and it fell to the ground with a soft thud and some of its contents spilled onto the cool grass.

In his petty thrashing, Luffy caught himself by wrapping his legs around the branch he had been sitting on and now hung, upside down with his hand on his head to secure his hat. He grabbed hold of a nearby branch and stretched himself safely down to the ground.

"Whew," he sighed. "That was a close one!"

"Idiot!" she scolded him viciously, hurrying over to her bag. "You better not have broken anything."

"Oh, sorry, I—" he suddenly fell silence for a moment when his eyes fell upon the bag and its spilled contents. "What's that?"

Luffy stood stock still, pointing at a rolled up piece of paper that lay beside the bag. It was old and worn-looking, and shifted slightly as the soft breeze through the clearing.

"What's what?" the redhead inquired, quickly grabbing the paper and stuffing it back into her bag along with various other items.

"That paper you just had, it looked like a m—"

"What did you say your name was? Luffy?" she closed her bag and got to her feet quickly, throwing it over her shoulder.

Luffy merely nodded in response.

"So what exactly are you doing here in Crescent Village?"

"Well, my crew and I are here to restock our supplies. Then we're going to head deeper into the Grand Line to find One Piece. Once we get the map back, that is." The boy smiled proudly, resting his fists on his waist.

_He seems familiar...have I stolen from him before maybe?_

"Oh really? And what's a kid like you gonna do with One Piece?" she inquired, not quite believing him.

"I'm gonna be King of the Pirates!"

"Really now?" she replied in mock surprise, laughing at his enthusiasm. "A scrawny kid like you? You couldn't get within a thousand miles of One Piece without your head being cut off."

Then suddenly the boy became serious. He got his first real look at the girl. She seemed to be dressed in a slightly piratical fashion, in loose black pants and a white tank top. There was a sweeping red sash tied around her waist, and, the most peculiar thing was the coil of thin rope that hung from a loop on the side of her pants.

He was about to protest to her negativity, but his curiosity overrode his initial instinct. "What's your name?" he inquired.

"Well, not that this hasn't been fun, But I'll be going now," the redhead was already a half dozen paces away, raising a hand over her shoulder to say good bye.

"Hey wait a minute!" Luffy yelled, running and stretching his arm out to grab onto her shoulder. "You can't leave without giving me your name; I gave you mine. That's rude!"

The girl wheeled around and smacked his hand away. "Says the one who nearly collided with me while I was sleeping! Don't talk to me about rude!" she barked back.

"But that was an accident! How was I supposed to know you were there?"

"Instead of flying, you could just walk like—"

The girl suddenly stopped mid-sentence. Her eyes were fixed on a small patch of sky that shown through in between two clumps of branched over head. A small, brightly colored bird flew over their heads, and her eyes never once let it go, until it had returned behind the leaves and on to its destination.

"That's the bird that lives on the docks..." she whispered.

"Huh?"

He didn't get an answer though. The girl shot off and was out of sight within seconds. Luffy stood in shear confusion and bewilderment for a moment, and then started off after her. "H-hey, wait a minute!" he called after her.

Luffy knew his demand wouldn't reach her, so he sped up to try to catch her himself. The two had run nearly a mile before he had even a glimpse of her. It was then that she suddenly stopped, almost mid-flight.

Nearly crashing into her for the second time that afternoon from behind, he dug his heels deep into the ground in an attempt to stop himself. Leaving deep ruts in the ground, he finally skidded to a stop right beside the mysterious and unpredictable girl.

But she didn't even seem to notice that he had followed her at that point. Before he could hope to catch his breath, she had two arms around a branch high above and sung herself up onto it. Crouching down like a frog, she sprung onto a nearby limb, then turned around and ascended to yet a higher branch above; she did this until Luffy could no longer see her.

"Hey, didn't you hear me?" Luffy shouted, in between gasps. But he got no answer still. Snorting in irritation, he stretched one of his arms up to the highest branch he could see and held on, pulling himself quickly to the top.

He shielded his eyes from the bright streams of sunlight that penetrated the walls of leaves around him and searched for the girl. It took him only a few seconds to find her. The mysterious redhead was crouching on a particularly thin branch, just a few feet away from Luffy. At once he sprung for it, determined to watch her before she had a chance to run off again.

Swearing viciously, she reached for the rope on her left hip even before he landed on the branch. There was a loud snap, and the limb she and Luffy were on broke away from the trunk. Crashing through the lower branches, the limb fell violently to the ground below. It was little more than the size of an arm, so it would just barely have held the weight of the girl, let alone both of them.

It was a bit of an awkward sight, to see the two of them hanging on for dear life like they were. The girl was hanging onto the end of the rope, which was tightly wrapped around a sturdier branch up above. Clinging to her left ankle was a severely startled Luffy.

"Whoohoo!" he gasped as the two swung helplessly in the air. The boy gazed down at the branch that now lay in several broken and battered pieces on the ground far below. "That was clo—"

"Don't you ever think before you do anything?!" the girl cried, stomping on his head with her other free foot.

"Ow, hey that hurts!" he protested.

"GOOD."

Luffy swatted the foot away from his face with one hand. Even though the girl was only wearing sandals much like his own, she still had a good amount of force behind them.

"Let go," she demanded, ceasing to try to decapitate him for the moment.

"No," Luffy suddenly became serious again. "Not until you tell me your name!"

"Why should I?"

"'Cause I told you mine."

"Well whose fault is that?"

"Just tell me!"

"No!"

"Then I won't let go!"

"Let go of me you rubber freak!"

Luffy made a face. "No."

She opened her mouth to continue the argument, but suddenly shut it without uttering another word. The girl became rigid, and looked upwards, toward the small patch of clear blue sky she had previously been looking through.

"My name is Rei, now let go of me," she commanded in a quiet but forceful voice.

"See?" Luffy said, smiling and reaching out for a nearby branch. "It wasn't that hard, now was it?"

He got no response though. She swung effortlessly to another limb, gently tugged at the rope which came loose just as effortlessly, and coiled it up around her arm before returning it to its place on her hip.

Rei then reached out toward a clump of leaves and pushed it away. Through the hole, she could see the entire village and the ocean beyond. At first glance, everything seemed fine, but when her dark, almost black eyes scanned over the scene again, they narrowed into slits. There were two black flags flying above the docks. Once she could tell belonged to this 'Luffy' character, but the other, she knew, meant trouble.

About that time, the two heard a sound that seemed to resemble a distant explosion. A soft breeze blew, carrying the nearly silent murmuring voices in the village. Rei's hands tightened into fists.

"What was that?" Luffy inquired, gazing through the trees toward the town. He held his hat tightly on his head against the breeze.

"Cannon fire you idiot. What else could it be?" she barked in a harsh voice.

"Really?" Luffy said, squinting through the bright sunlight to try to see the reason why she had become so serious and almost frightening. He then turned back to the girl to await her answer.

But she was no longer there; she was already descending gracefully down from their tree top perch to the ground far below. If one had stood at a distance watching her nimble descent, they would have taken her to be a childish little tree nymph. The branches became like a playground jungle gym that she seemed to have known all her life.

Luffy snorted once more in frustration and put his left hand on his right shoulder. Taking a step back, he seemed to almost throw his arm down toward the girl. It stretched willingly and he grabbed hold of the girl's wrist just as she landed on the ground below.

"Hold it!" he said, leaping down to meet her at the base of the old tree. "Don't just go running off again."

"I never said you couldn't follow," she replied, calmly taking his hand off of her wrist.

Luffy in turn gave her a bit of a confused look.

"I assumed you'd come along even if I said you couldn't. Your ship might be in danger, after all."

"What?!"

Rei stared blankly at him for a moment and then rubbed the bridge of her nose, sighing. "I'm going to pretend that didn't just happen," she told herself.

"Hey..." Luffy interjected, kneeling down on the grass. "What is this?" He picked something up that had been lying at his feet. He seemed to have completely forgotten the previous conversation and all of its seriousness.

"Oh my god..."

There, resting in the palms of his two upturned hands was a small treasure that might have even rivaled the grandest wealth of the greatest pirates in history. It was no wider than three fingers, and smaller than the length of a hand. At first glance, one would have mistaken it for a small brick of gold.

The top and bottom were a vibrant bloody red color, almost as if someone had slit their palms and then picked up the dazzling brick of gold. The middle, where it jutted out on all sides was a stunningly vivid gold, though it was much to light to be actually made out of the valuable metal.

The redhead's hands flew instantly to both of her two pockets. First, she patted the outsides viciously, and then plunged her hands deep into them. But she came up empty handed. Her eyes were wide.

"Give me that!" she spat, striking her hand out like a poisonous snake. She snatched up the harmonica from the boy's hands with lightening speed, almost without being seen. She quickly hid the melodious instrument away back in her pocket.

"Honestly..." Rei grumbled, turning around and walking off. "Stealing something that doesn't belong to you, knocking me out of my tree, nearly killing me with your stupidity; what kind of bratty disrespectful child are you?"

Luffy merely stood there staring at her as he watched her walk away and get smaller with distance.

"Hey wait a—"

"Hurry up, moron. I'm gonna spend all my afternoon getting rid of those pirates by myself, and I've got more important things to do today," she commanded stiffly.

In response, Luffy quickly jumped to his feet and ran off after her with a smile, holding his hat tightly on his head.


	2. Chapter Two: Heat of Battle

"Damnit, where could they be?!"

_Wham!_

"I don't know, but Zoro better hurry up!"

_Crack!_

"I just hope he can find Luffy before the rest of these guys do," Usopp commented, loading another jagged, hard stone into his slingshot.

Sanji brought his heel down with a sickening thump onto a fat pirate's head, and his cutlass fell from his hand. The pirate's body fell in a lump on the ground, following after the cutlass. "Don't worry about it, he can take care of himself, remember?"

"I'm not sure that it's him I'm worried about," Nami cut in, warding off a club and a sword or two with her climo-tact. The three looked up just in time to see a large dirty cloud of smoke rising from behind a bunch of buildings that looked to be on the other side of town.

The group looked each other in the eye for just a moment or two before they simultaneously went back to cutting through the colorful and soon to be bloody and unconscious sea of pirates.

"You can't do anything right, can you?!" Rei screamed angrily through the smoke, covering her mouth with her hand and coughing uncontrollably.

"Oops, sor—"

"I brought you to help me save the freaking town, not destroy it you moronic rubber freak!"

More coughing.

"Hey, I said I was sor—"

"Anyways," she continued. At last the two spotted each other through the clouds of dust and smoke. "We need to get to the docks as soon as possible. I have a vague feeling that the root of our problems is at the harbor, along with the rest of this crew of yours."

Luffy nodded in response. "Right."

"But first..." she said softly, almost to herself. She turned suddenly and kicked one of the downed men that lay at her feet. Her kick nailed him right in the side and the man doubled up in pain. Resting her foot on top of his chest, Rei leaned her elbow onto her knee. "Ok, you slime, who do you work for and why are you here?"

"Blast you, demon; our captain Devout will surely send you back to hell where you belong."

Rei put more weight onto the man's chest by leaning forwad. The man yelped helplessly in pain as she pushed harder on his freshly broken rib that Rei had inflicted upon him.

"Well, you've answered one of my questions. Now be a good boy and tell me the other part. Then maybe I'll let you like long enough to go crawling back to this saintly captain of yours."

"Like hell you will!" came a snarl from somewhere off to her right.

Rei looked up just in time to see the glare and shining iron of a sharp sword slicing the air in between it and her head.

There was a muffled clang, and a pair of dark eyes hid a delightfully wicked smirk within each. The skilled redhead stood, a small length of rope held between her two clenched fists, stretched out just inches from her face. It was holding the sword at bay, despite the strength of the buff bearded man behind it holding the hilt.

The attacking pirate's eyes widened considerably. "H—how? It's just a tiny little piece of str—"

"You like it? I made it myself. I wove it out of a sea king's fur and indestructible, yet microscopic steel wire. There's no better thing for fending off a blade." Her eyes seemed to glow with pride, almost like that of a parent toward their child.

"Amazing!" Luffy exclaimed, his jaw dropping to the ground.

"Well, what do you think Luffy?" she glanced back over her shoulder at the enthralled boy. "How should I get rid of him? Send him flying? Or just decapitate him and get it over with?"

But Luffy didn't have the time to answer her question. Another wall of blade and club toting pirates had formed between them and the destroyed wall of the building they were in, the one way leading to the street and eventually leading to the harbor and the captain of the band of misfits.

It didn't seem to even pose a challenge to the two fighters though. With just two subtle flicks of the wrist, Rei sent the man in front of her flying. He in turn took out at least three of his comrades blocking their exit.

Suddenly, as the pirates moved in to fill in the whole after a moment of shock and surprise, Luffy suddenly had one of his bright ideas.

"Oi, Rei, I got an idea, grab on to me!"

She merely rolled her eyes and gathered up her rope into a loop and tossed in over her shoulder. "Why do I have a feeling it's not one of your _good_ ideas?"

But she didn't refuse. Luffy stretched his arms out to both sides of the room where their enemies stood. He grabbed firmly onto two big slabs of rubble and took half a dozen steps backwards, and Rei hooked one arm around his neck and the other across his chest. She half feared what would happen, and also half wanted to know what exactly was going to transpire.

"GUM GUM..." his feet left the ground, and so did he and Rei. "...SLINGSHOT!"

The two flew at lightning speed, with Luffy feet first and Rei hanging onto him from behind for dear life, swearing up a storm.

There was another small explosion as bodies went flying everywhere, some into buildings, and some into the sky, where they became no more than screaming specks among the clouds. The two escaping teens exploded out of the building and the dust and smoke, Luffy smiling and holding his hat to his head, and Rei screaming and holding on for dear life.

"Yahooooooooo!" Luffy cried as they flew through a narrow alleyway that on a normal day would have to have been calculated into the plan long before it was put into action. But in this case, anyone, including Rei, could tell it was nothing more that dumb luck; sheer, stupid, blind, incomprehensibly dumb luck.

It was all too good to be true though. Gravity reached out at them with its cruel invisible fingers and pulled the two down from their jet speed flight through the town. Luckily for Rei, Luffy was between her and the ground, so she was able to ride him like a sled on the hard concrete and cobblestoned ground for a while.

But to her dismay, one of his hands shot out from under her and grabbed onto a doorframe nearby. Luffy stopped, but unfortunately, she didn't. Rei hit the ground and bounced brutally down the street, and then rolled a long distance. She immediately covered her head with her hands and tucked her elbows and bag into her chest; she straightened her legs out so as to minimize the damage to her body until she could come to a complete stop.

So when she finally rose to her feet after a moment lying dazed on the ground, she was virtually unharmed but for a few bumps and bruises. Her attitude was just a little more than that though.

Once she had brushed herself off as much as possible, she lit into the straw hated boy like there was no tomorrow coming for quite a long time. However, Luffy heard not one word of her yelling and swearing; he was still dazed and recovering from their poorly constructed attempt at landing. Rei could almost literally see the stars swirling around in his eyes.

Finally realizing her yelling was doing her no good, she merely sighed and threw her battered and bruised arms up into the air in submission. Then quickly she lowered them and slid her hands into her pockets, checking to see if all of the important contents had survived the impact intact.

Her harmonica was safe, so she sighed and let the whole ordeal go. "I swear you're only here to cause me trouble and pain," she told herself.

"Rei Rei?"

Suddenly she spun like an agile ballerina at the soft whisper of her name.

There, hiding behind a crate in between two buildings stood a small child that couldn't have been any more than six or seven years of age.

"Missy?" Rei stuttered, her eyes softening.

She took a step toward the girl, and then stopped, her eyes widening. "Why aren't you inside?" she inquired harshly. "Do you have any idea how dangerous it is out here?!"

The girl in question shrunk back slightly in response to Rei's raised voice. "I—I just wanted to make sure you knew they were here..." she answered quietly. "Like when you defeated those pirates last time and saved out village..."

"That doesn't mean that I can always prevent them from killing..." she stopped suddenly, and fell to one knee. "Come here Missy," she commanded softly, outstretching her arms. The little girl ran into her arms and hugged her tightly. "It's ok," Rei whispered, hugging the child back.

But then she took Missy by the shoulders and held her at arm's length. "Now look, Missy," she said, gazing deep into her eyes with a serious tone and expression. "I want you to find the nearest unlocked building, or some kind of hiding place, and stay there, until I or someone you know comes to get you."

She nodded timidly.

"Understand? Not before then."

She nodded again.

"Ok," she spun the little girl around and pushed her gently away. "Now get going." Missy took a few steps, then turned back around to face Rei. "Go on, I'll only be gone a little while," for the first time that day, Rei smiled. A real smile, not a smirk.

Without another word, the dark haired little girl ran off down the street and soon disappeared into the town. The redhead sighed and then got to her feet, dusting off the dirt from her pants and knees.

"Come on," she said, turning to Luffy. "Let's go."

One body went flying, then another. Two more fell to the ground. One stumbled back, screaming as tobacco sauce exploded in their eyes. Nami, Sanji, Usopp and Chopper were going a fine job holding their own, but the pirates just kept pouring in from nowhere. Where one went down, three more fell in and took his place.

Then suddenly the attack stopped.

_Boom!_

Silence.

_Boom!_

"Why haven't you maggots seized this town yet, you good for nothing dogs!"

All four sets of eyes widened in unison. He was at least three times the size of a normal man. His long dark brown hair was tied back behind his head, and hung at least to his waist. A colorful pair of goggles was strapped across his head, and the lenses were colored a bright yellow, so the color of his eyes could by no means be determined. It could only be assumed they were of a very dark color.

He wore a long dark blue over coat, much like the style of a high ranking naval officer. The shoulders were embroidered with golden thread that sparkled and shined so much that one could mistake it for the real thing.

Other than his coat, his chest was bare of clothing, but covered in many scars instead. It looked as if he had been tossed into a blender at some point in his life and had gotten out just in time, before he was shredded into ribbons.

In contrast with his royal attire, the giant man wore army camouflage pants and gargantuan thick black steel toed boots. He seemed able bodied enough to lead millions upon 

millions sufficiently. The way he held himself seemed only to amplify this appearance as much as tenfold.

All of the pirates that had come off the intricate ship that had sailed in with various trumpet fanfares to the harbor stepped out of the way, and as they did, they placed their left hands on their chests and bent considerably at the waist, bowing before their highly esteemed captain. He seemed to take no notice of them, and took a few large steps toward the straw hats his crew had been fighting.

The large and intimidating man seemed as much as, or more than twice his originally estimated size to the four shrinking misfits that continued to try to defend the Going Merry. Three of the four straw hats took a step or two backwards in response. Usopp hid behind everyone else, but their yellow haired comrade did not give the giant even an inch. Sanji merely took another long drag on his cigarette that was resting loosely between his first and second fingers of his left hand and his thin lips. The cool cook stared lazily at their newest enemy, but he could tell that it would be an interesting fight, in the least.

"Jes' four'v em?" the giant boomed in a loud voice full of raw disgust and underestimation.

An older man with a rather large amount of facial hair stepped forward, bowing even lower to his captain.

"We are ever so sorry and ashamed My liege, please spare us and find it in your wonderfully great and powerful heart to forgive us and our ineptitudes. We shall promise never to disgrace you with this kind of failure again and win your grace's favor back."

The large oddly dressed man rested his chin in his right hand and his right elbow on his left arm which was across his chest. Simultaneously all of the cowering crew fell to one knee and bowed their heads.

In unison, they pleaded, "Please forgive us Lord Devout!"

Then suddenly, a light breeze blew from the south, and it seemed to capture this 'lord's attention. The wind caused his royal colored coat to dance and rustle quietly along with the whispering trees in and beyond the town.

It was then that a confident female voice interrupted the tense scene.

"I don't think it's him you should be asking for mercy."


End file.
